Paradise receives extraordinary snowfall. The steep roof of Paradise Inn was designed to shed heavy snow, and the same extreme annual snowfall has created the enormous glaciers that descend from the summit of Mount Rainier. Early park naturalist Floyd Schmoe, who wintered at Paradise Inn in 1920, recalled living under a mountainous snowdrift, unable to hear the wind as the huge wooden building creaked and groaned each night under the settling weight of snow. He remembered waking at eight o'clock in morning darkness after storms and finding that the tunnels had been snowed over or drifted full during the night. At the Paradise Weather Station, annual snowfall recorded for July 1, 1919 to 1930 reached 1,122 inches in the record high year of 1921-22. The average was 643 inches, and the record low was 313 inches in 1939-40. In years of extreme snowfall, Paradise Inn is almost completely buried. Close to the coast, Mount Rainier draws in storms as moisture-laden Pacific air is forced steeply upward, cools, and falls heavily on these slopes.